Company director Mr Juan Martínez explains that the FLTs are used to handle a wide variety of cargo, encompassing granite blocks, sawn timber, aluminium ingots, containers and wind tower sections. Indeed, Vigo has an annual throughput of granite of some half million tons, making it one of Europe’s most important in this respect.
“The FLTs don’t normally need to be fitted with special tools or extensions, although these are occasionally deployed on special cargo movements,” explains Mr Martínez. “We only ever really considered acquiring FLTs to handle the various types of cargo, because it wouldn’t have been practical to use other equipment, such as reachstackers, for example, to do the same work.”
In some applications, FLTs have become synonymous with major accidents, as employees become over-familiar with their presence, however Mr Martínez stresses that its terminal has never suffered from this.
“The good thing about FLTs is that is only takes about one week to train an employee to drive one of them. Furthermore, they are relatively easy to maintain and relatively reliable if you stick to the suggested preventative maintenance scheduling,” he says, adding that, in terms of fuel consumption, FLTs are expensive machines to operate.
VGC calculates that a return on investment on an FLT can be made within five years.
